


How Will I Know?

by thoughtsthatfester



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Secret Relationship, Spilling the Beans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-05-29 06:34:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15067277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtsthatfester/pseuds/thoughtsthatfester
Summary: All of the people who matter to Tessa and Scott find out.





	1. Suzanne - October 2017

She’s crying and Tessa’s crying and Scott’s crying and it’s such a relief when they call it a wrap and the crew disperses. 

“What a wonderful surprise,” Suzanne tells them through tears. She’d been truly shocked when she’d been led into the rink to dimmed lights and Tessa and Scott floating across the ice. Tessa and Scott skating toward her, tears in their eyes, wrapping her up and thanking her. 

She pulls them into another hug before stepping back to take stock of them. They’ve failed to disentangle from each other, his arm around her shoulder, hers around his waist. They both smile back at her, eyes warm and happy. She feels grateful, lucky to have taught them and seen them skate and lucky to have gotten to know them as people. 

“Do you have time for us to take you to lunch?” Scott asks. 

“Of course,” she says. “I’ll always have time for you guys.”

“We have so much to catch up on,” Tessa says in a small voice, eyes full of tears – so uncharacteristically Tessa. The little girl she coached was so steady, so even, that the only time she ever saw her cry was the first time she sliced her hand on her blade. Even then it was mostly from shock. Tessa had always been absorbing Scott’s emotions, balancing his moods. 

Scott nods, “we’ll go get out of our skates if you want to go put the flowers in your office and meet us in the lobby.”

They skate off hand in hand to quickly change out of their skates and Suzanne is finally able to stop crying. They will always be her favorite students and not because they’re the most successful she’s ever had. She loves them and she’s spent their career worried for them – not for their skating, because they’ve always been incredible, ISU be damned – because she saw them on a collision course even as little kids. She remembers little Tessa and little Scott who would drop hands as soon as they could and blushed a little too much when learning new choreography – little Tessa and little Scott with feelings that were too much, even then. That’s why, even more than skating, she focused on teaching them to always be respectful and kind to each other on the ice in hopes it would serve them as well whenever the romantic feelings between them came to a head. 

But they were gone before that happened, off to Canton. She wishes, sometimes desperately, that they could have stayed with her, wishes she could have been there through good and bad. Instead, she followed their career from a distance, got occasional updates from Alma, and tried to ignore the rumors. Those dogged rumors that had followed them for a decade – secret babies and marriage and affairs with older men and mind games with one another – she really tried to ignore those, remember the little kids that skated so big and cared so much about each other, even then. 

She heard the rumors about them during the Carmen season. Everyone did. She will not speculate on what was going on then and she will not speculate about what’s going on now no matter how many times the skaters she works with, who admire and love Tessa and Scott so much, ask her what’s going on between them (tweens these days spend too much time online). 

All that she hopes for them is that they were always able to maintain respect on the ice, whatever was happening off it, and that they’ve resolved things between them – no matter the result. (But of course, she’s always hoped for a happy ending for them).

She meets them in the lobby and she laughs at how thrilled Scott is to learn that his favorite diner is still around and still makes an excellent turkey club and that she really doesn’t mind if they go there for old times’ sake. 

“So tame!” Suzanne remarks on Scott’s car as he unlocks it. “The Scott Moir I knew would’ve picked a red sports car with a red interior,” she laughs.

“Oh,” Tessa laughs. “Scott actually does have red leather seats. I’m the one with the white/beige combo.”

Okay, so Scott drives Tessa’s car. That’s very intimate, certainly an indication that things have resolved themselves for the better, not that she’s keeping track. 

She climbs into the passenger seat beside Scott as Tessa climbs into the back, leaning forward immediately to take Scott’s hand from where it rests on the center console.

“We really can’t thank you enough for everything,” Tessa starts, her voice breaking a little bit. “We’re so happy to see you. We’ve missed you.”

“And we wouldn’t be where we are today without you,” Scott finishes. 

Suzanne goes to protest.

“No, really,” Tessa says, squeezing Scott’s hand and sharing a look. A silent conversation goes on between the two of them and it’s almost uncomfortably intimate until they turn their gazes back to her. This is not what she meant when she told little Tessa and little Scott to “find that connection.” 

“We’re getting married this summer.” Tessa says, a smile spreading across her face. 

“You guys…” she squeals. It’s more than she dared to hope. 

“We mean it,” Scott tells her, a dopey grin on his face, “we wouldn’t be here without you. Our partnership wouldn’t have lasted if it weren’t for you. We would have crashed and burned a decade ago. Everything you taught us got us through the bad times.”

“You guys…” she repeats. She’s crying now. She said she would never speculate, but who’s she kidding? She wanted them to get married just like everyone else in Canada. 

“You’ll be getting a ‘Save the Date’ soon,” Tessa tells her through crocodile tears, “but we wanted to tell you and to thank you.” 

“How long?” Suzanne asks, because screw it. “I had no idea, well, I thought maybe but I didn’t know, didn’t know if I was just projecting.”

“Two years,” Scott tells her. “Almost to the day actually.”

“There were so many false starts,” Tessa adds because they trust Suzanne implicitly. “We spent so many years getting it wrong. We worked so hard to get here, and we really do mean it when we say we were only able to do that because of you.”

“I am so happy for you guys. Truly. I mean it when I say you are absolute gifts to each other and I couldn’t be more proud of the athletes and people you’ve become.”

“C’mon, “ Scott laughs, his voice full of emotion. “We’ll never make it out of the parking lot if you make me cry.” 

She laughs too. “Alright. No more sappiness. I want details on this wedding and then we can talk skating at lunch.”

“I don’t even know where to begin,” Tessa grins, catching Scott’s eyes as he looks at her in the rear view mirror. 

Suzanne smiles too and listens with great interest as Tessa outlines their plans, Scott chiming in, clearly an equal partner in all areas, including wedding planning. 

She's never been so proud of them - not even Vancouver.


	2. Jordan - July/October 2015

“So what’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” She asks pouring her younger sister a generous glass of white. It’s a question she already knows the answer to. If there is one thing she’s learned in law, it’s to never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. 

“Just volleyball,” Tessa answers, taking a big sip of wine, avoiding her eye contact, suddenly fascinated by the new painting in Jordan’s living room. 

“Who are you going with?” she presses on. 

“Scott,” Tessa replies, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. 

“Is the curler coming?” 

“No. It’s team bonding volleyball,” Tessa answers a little too quickly. 

“Ah,” she responds, an eyebrow arching up towards her hairline. She takes a large sip of her wine and says nothing. 

“We’re allowed to be friends,” Tessa crosses her arms. 

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I can hear you thinking it.”

“Just be careful, okay? I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“It’s Scott,” Tessa laughs as if it being Scott would somehow make her immune to being hurt. 

As if she had forgotten her little sister’s romantic history. As if she could forget Tessa, high on painkillers, breaking down in tears while she was recovering from her first surgery over Scott. Scott, who, she confessed, she’d been sleeping with and it was complicated because they didn’t know what they were or what they wanted to be and while he’d texted her after the surgery, he’d all but stopped talking to her since then. All the while she was getting texts from others in Canton letting her know Marina was trying to audition Scott with other partners, that she’d basically been written off. That her career was over, just when she realized how badly she’d wanted it. 

Somewhere in Tessa’s abandoned iTunes library - untouched in years - is a playlist from that time consisting of a lot of angsty Taylor Swift. Jordan heard it on repeat for weeks on end while she tried and failed to get Tessa to open up more about the whole thing, something she had refused to talk about after her initial confession. 

The sex had been conveniently left out of their book but so had Scott’s visit to London later in the recovery when the two of them had a proper fight, another thing Tessa refused to talk about with anyone. It was between her and Scott, no one else, and she would not be talking about it with her or their mom. That was her answer no matter how hard they pushed. 

The next thing she knew Scott was dating some pairs skater she vaguely remembered from childhood competitions and he and Tessa had been ordered to marriage counseling once she was able to return to the rink. It wasn’t something Tessa wanted to talk about, so they didn’t. 

“Cara mentioned that Scott and Kaitlyn were taking a little break last time I ran into her.” 

“I don’t want to talk about Scott’s love life if you don’t mind,” Tessa sighs, “it’s complicated. Can we just leave it there?”

“Fine,” she relents. “You can hear about my love life instead. It is decidedly less complicated and there are zero gold medalists involved, but that doesn’t make it any less dramatic.”

Tessa laughs, gives decent advice, helps her stalk the new guy’s ex and in turn, she pretends not to see her baby sister’s phone lighting up with texts from a mysterious contact (as if the heart and male dancer emojis could be for anyone else). 

She doesn’t bring up Scott when she sees her at the end of CNE. Tessa is the one who volunteers that Scott and Kaitlyn are over before quickly changing the subject. 

No, Jordan doesn’t bring up Scott until October when Tessa texts her to let her know she and Scott will be in Toronto in a couple of days so she’ll be staying in a hotel, not with her. 

Jordan shuts her office door and places a FaceTime call to her sister.

“Hi,” Tessa answers almost instantly, having tossed her book aside. 

“Are you alone?”

“Yeah,” Tessa says straightening a bit on her couch. “Why?”

“Are you sure there’s no Scott Moir out of frame?”

“No. He’s at the gym,” Tessa answers as if Scott being at her house is the most natural thing in the world and that she knows exactly what he’s doing at all times.

“Okay. Tessa, what is going on? And please don’t give me an ‘it’s complicated.’”

Tessa grins, “we’re really good.” 

“So you’re a couple now?” Jordan asks, trying to suppress a smile. 

“It’s complicated,” Tessa sighs. 

“Tessa!” She shrieks. 

“Sorry - it’s a reflex. We’re not sure what to label it, but yes, the partnership now includes romance.”

“Wow,” Jordan says, half in shock. “I mean, I’m not surprised, no one will be, but I can’t believe it’s actually happening. You’re happy?”

“My cheeks hurt from smiling all the time. I’m happier than I ever thought I could be. We’re so happy.”

“When did this happen?”

“We’re going to mark it in October, like we do with our skating anniversary.”

“Okay, but we’re going to need an exact date. We have a lot of bets riding on this,” she grins.

“I hate all of you,” Tessa smiles back. “We’ll talk about it and let you know what date you can use, if you must, and it sounds like you must.” 

“Oh, we must. There is so much money in these pools, you don’t even know. If you’d only waited until December I’d be heading to Chanel after work.”

Tessa laughs, harder than Jordan’s seen in a while. “I’m sorry we didn’t get it together on a date that would have won you the most money. We’re sorry we weren’t more considerate of the family betting pools while working out this very complicated thing that’s been hanging over our heads for a decade or so.”

“I forgive you,” she laughs. “It’s been a long time coming.”

“A long time coming,” Tessa sighs. 

“So who knows?” Jordan asks. She wants to text everybody. She wants to go to the roof of her office building and scream because she is so happy that her baby sister and her skating partner (now actual partner) figured out this giant thing between them that always seemed insurmountable (though not so much lately). If she’s honest, she’d been worried that one of them would take one of their relationships too far and get engaged. They were always going to work it out - she was certain of that - the only question was whether or not they’d realize they were meant to be before they got engaged to, or god forbid married to another person. She’s happy they won’t have to deal with that. This is it. This is finally it. 

“No one. You’re the first, so please keep it to yourself for another couple hours. Scott is telling his brothers this afternoon and then mom, Joe, and Alma are coming over for dinner, so please don’t spill it before then.”

“You invited them over for dinner and you think they don’t already know what you’re going to tell them?”

“I’m sure they know exactly what we’re going to tell them. I don’t think anyone will be taking a lesson in subtlety from our 2015. But it’s important that we tell them ourselves.”

“I understand - and, oh shit, I have to go. I have a call in two minutes. But please text me when it’s safe to talk about because I need to scream about this in the group chat as soon as I can.” 

“Of course. I love you.”

“Love you, too,” she says before hanging up and dialing into her conference call. It’s not until the call wraps that she realizes she’s been too distracted to take a single note. And, if, when she goes to enter her time at the end of the day and realizes she’s done about an hour of billable work and spent the rest of the day looking at bridesmaid dresses, she’ll laugh it off. She’s got the whole rest of the month to hit her billable minimum. And, if she were allowed to talk about it, she’s sure the partners would understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m on tumblr with the same name if you ever want to scream about Tessa and Scott

**Author's Note:**

> I've resisted for months but I finally caved. I watched the Be the Cheer video one too many times and now I'm writing RPF. Everyone will find out and this will jump around in time quite a bit, but I haven't decided who comes next so if you have any preferences please let me know.


End file.
